Incognito
by Parsley
Summary: AU. A crafty serial killer manages evade the police force. Frustrated, the force hires a mysterious detective with a flawless record. The tables turn when the detective completely vanishes and the killer is still at large.


_Snap!_

The booming noise of the camera was followed by a blinding flash of light along with the release of a lung-splitting smog. The frantic police force investigating the small apartment room barely noticed, with the exception of a gruff-looking man in the corner who had been caught in the photograph. He seemed temporarily dazed by the sudden flash of light and his dilated pupils searched longingly for any sort of darkness. The camera flash had been a wake up call to the detective and painfully reminded him of the bright, burning, daylight sun as a not-so-gentle good morning slap in the face.

_Snap!_

The camera flashed again as if to express a grudge with its overkill and the man teetered around in the opposite direction. The man grumbled and tried to ignore the black and rainbow colored spots growing darker and bigger in his vision like a rainstorm on a lake. The man pathetically pretended to investigate the old mahogany desk opposing of the camera whilst blinded. He meaningfully adjusted his dingy green trench coat and rubbed a rough hand to the back of his dizzy head.

"Detective!" someone growled from behind him. The dazed detective, assuming that the disappointed voice was calling for him, dropped his shoulders and grimaced. The clacking sound of dignified shoes filled his pitiful ears as the other man undoubtedly approached him. "What are you doing?" the man snapped.

"S-sorry, Mr. Edgeworth," the detective apologized, looking bashful. "I just thought there might be something – "

"You're standing blankly in front of a bare table with a confused look on your face. Get back to work," the man, Edgeworth, said with a dreary sigh. The detective, fearing that his salary may be cut again from such an incident, nodded loyally and wandered away from the table, looking around the bland apartment room with a defiant frown spread across his face. His vision was still hazy, but he pressed on with an outward appearance of interest and care. The detective pessimistically thought about all the foods he could not buy if his salary got cut again.

The detective, Dick Gumshoe, stole a quick glance at the overseer of the apartment investigation – Edgeworth. Gumshoe was admittedly frightened by Edgeworth on this particular day. Normally, the man was solemn, calm, collected, and somewhat quiet. He had everything under control. He was not the sort of person to snap under pressure or become rattled when expectations were not met.

It was safe to say that on the particular day of the apartment investigation, Edgeworth had _snapped_.

Edgeworth, typically sharp and classy in his appearance, was a complete disaster. His face was red; his eyes were filled with rage and panic. His jaw was so tight that Gumshoe feared that it was seconds away from shattering. Edgeworth's perfectly set cravat was loosened and slightly off center. His elegant magenta suit was half tucked in and half tucked out of his trousers. Edgeworth's slick gray hair was noticeably sticking up in the back and his fringes were a complete mess. Overall, Edgeworth looked terrifying – like a ruffled up tiger who had been made a fool of by his prey.

"Get _out_!" Edgeworth ordered bitterly to the gawking reporters standing near the doorway with their cameras. One looked like he was about to snap a quick shot of Edgeworth for the sake of the media, but Edgeworth's hell-bent glare made him decide otherwise. "This is a private matter!" Edgeworth said with a lick of severe menace that caused the reporters to flee through the paint-chipped apartment door without so much as a final glance at the intriguing investigation.

Looking flustered, Edgeworth slammed the door behind the reporters and briskly turned back to Gumshoe like a slick viper. Gumshoe tried his hardest to play innocent and pretended to look intrigued by a nearby desk that sat against the dull apartment wall. Unfortunately, it was no use for the irritable Edgeworth. "Gumshoe, if your salary gets any lower, you're going to have to payto do your job."

Gumshoe's stocky face reddened in response. He cleared his deep throat and inspected the desk he had stumbled upon. From behind, he heard a horribly stressed sigh from Edgeworth that was screaming in agony for a vacation. Gumshoe wished – for both his and Edgeworth's sake – that the possibility of going on vacation was open. But sadly, there were far too many important matters to be worrying about, rendering something menial such as vacation laughably low on the list of things to do.

Recently, a string of murders – serial killings – could be linked back to a single source. The confident murderer would hide a single playing card in the exact room of the crime scene where he killed his victims. At first, this was thought to be a coincidence, but it quickly became apparent that the killer in the different cases was the same person. The cases were too similar with the obscure and disturbingly graphic causes of death. No matter how hard the police frantically tried to track down the killer to prevent the murders, the murderer would always succeed and slip through the cracks of the gutter in his grand, stealthy escape. _Every time._

The whole situation was a gigantic insult to the police department. The public began to look down on the police force, whispering gossip about how _they _were the ones murdering the victims. It took a grave hit on the ego of those working there – especially the innocent higher-ups who got blamed like Edgeworth. It seemed like the further the force got with the investigation and the more they seemed to find out about the killer, the more of a baffling, frustrating mystery it became. Truly, the case was a complete chaotic mess.

The small apartment currently being torn inside out, however, was not a crime scene. In fact, the investigation in the apartment arguably had nothing to do with the serial killings. However, the matter being investigated in the apartment was of equal importance to the murders that had been occurring.

Because of the police forces' inability to find at all about the killer, they pitifully remained at loss for a period of time, chasing their own tails. With much dismay, it was then decided to hire the country's best known private investigator for the case – secretly, of course, in order to keep the force's pride in tact.

In order to find him, strings in the high reaches of the force had been discreetly pulled. Calling upon the detective was – as he put it – a surreptitious love affair. He would do his business anonymously as long as the fact that he was hired in the first place remained a secret. Indeed, such work may or may not cross the blurred line unlawful and good, but the police force had faith in the detective's morals. The detective – 'Godot', as he called himself – only took cases that fancied his interests. Cases that – as he put it – sparked the pretty little light bulbs of his bland inspiration up into a sparking, sensational inferno. However, the police force quickly found that this sort of "inspiration" could also be achieves with a few persuasive words and the right amount of money. In exchange, they turned a blind eye to the fact that Godot could _certainly_ also be 'interested' in illegal things if enough money was presented to him; among other conditions that the police force did not wish to speak of.

There were two things certain about the detective that the police force quickly found out about. One was his hatred towards the public. Godot seemed to enjoy his anonymity and appeared bitter whenever the topic of the public was brought up. This was surprising, considering how good of a detective Godot was. He could easily get hired at any organization of his choice on any given day. The police force came to the logical conclusion that Godot could not stand to be bossed around. The second thing they learned about the detective was his love – obsession with coffee. It was an interesting quirk that set even the heaviest of coffee drinkers on the force in dismay due to the sheer amount of coffee consumed by Godot.

Godot's self-proclaimed title of "the greatest detective in the country by a long shot" was to be taken seriously. He did not award himself this title out of arrogance or public attention. The title he donned was as close to true as it could possibly get if such as thing as 'greatest' could be measured amongst people. Every case he ever took up had been solved no matter how complicated or supernatural it seemed. In a timely manor, Godot revealed the dirty truth every time.

Naturally, the police department let their guard down in relief when Godot had decided to take up the case and find out who the serial killer was. The police department quietly celebrated, knowing that everything was going to go smoothly now that they had Godot on their side. The serial killer would be pitifully sitting in prison by lunchtime and Godot's operation would go smoothly without leaving as much as a snag on the police department's proud record.

Unfortunately, the delusional daydream shared amongst the force did not come true. Precisely six days after he had taken the case, Godot went missing. It was as if he had completely vanished from the face of the earth, leaving no trace of himself behind at all. The police force lost all contact with him and began to worry about the condition of their prized, last-resort detective.

Detective Gumshoe was part of the unfortunate investigation team sent out to find Godot or any sign of him. Edgeworth was the unfortunate leader of the lost cause. Three days before the team began to investigate, during a phone conversation with Godot, the detective had – out of the blue – casually mentioned the address of an apartment. Weary, the police force had certainly taken note of this address but they did not think that they were going to need it.

The police force was wrong, and the address that Godot had mentioned turned out to be their _only_ hint of his whereabouts. It was frustrating to think that Godot had mentioned the address as if he knew very well that he would be missing in three days. The police force did not know if Godot's disappearance was intentional or not, but that did not matter. They needed to find Godot.

Gumshoe sighed and rummaged through an old desk drawer in the apartment. He removed the jumbled mass of papers that was inside and flipped through them with a small frown, making sure to inspect each and every one of the papers. They did not appear o be important papers – just random magazine clippings and holiday cards addressed to various people.

"Detective," Edgeworth addressed Gumshoe bitterly as he stared down with cold eyes at the papers he was panning through.

"… Yes, sir?"

"What do we know about the victim?"

The _victim_. Gumshoe paled, hoping for his salary that Edgeworth was referring to Godot. He did not know when the great detective had become the _victim _of anything. For all they knew, Godot could be lying on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean, laughing at the foolish detectives scampering around in a frantic mass of chaos looking for him with no hope to find them because of their less than superior deduction skills. To him, it could very well be a twisted game of hide and go seek. Gumshoe swallowed the lump in his throat and gruffly put the papers on top of the desk, gingerly taking note of where he had been in the stack. "Well…" Gumshoe started.

Edgeworth's hard glare urged him to continue like an electrified cattle prod. "He goes by the name Godot," Gumshoe stated hesitantly, looking the other way. Upon stating this, Gumshoe realized how pathetic it was the force did not have the slightest clue as to what the detective's _name _was.

"Yes," Edgeworth said briskly, tapping the pads of his fingers impatiently on the desk. "And?"

"He… he was here in this room at one point in time. Probably three days ago, but we can't be certain."

"Did he live here?"

Gumshoe scratched his head. "No. Godot likes to keep his identity a secret and would not just blurt out his personal address. I mean, there are probably a lot of people who want him dead, pal." Gumshoe chuckled lightly to himself at the brilliant deduction. Edgeworth, however, looked less than pleased.

"What else?" he asked flatly.

Gumshoe hesitated nervously. "Well, that seems to be all that we know about him, sir." Gumshoe flinched, ready for Edgeworth's mentally ridged self to explode, but the explosion never came, much to Gumshoe's surprise.

"Do you think that this incident has anything to do with the serial killer?" Edgeworth asked calmly, a hint of curiosity spiked in his dimly accented voice. Gumshoe was nervous by how sweet and simple the question was posed when Edgeworth was clearly not in a sweet and simple sort of mood. Gumshoe decided to take a leap of faith and answer the question with confidence and his very own opinion:

"Of course not!" Gumshoe exclaimed nonchalantly with a smug grin on his face. Before he could so much as think about the words he had spluttered out, there was blunt of impact from a blow to the back of Gumshoe's head. Once again, the detective was seeing stars and rainbows in a pained sort of daze.

"_You idiot_," Edgeworth growled bitterly, raising his nose and adjusting the cuff of his sleeve back to its former glory from before he had struck Gumshoe on the head. "This has _everything _to do with the serial killer. I cannot believe that you call yourself a detective. For all we know about Godot, _he_ could be the serial killer."

Once out of his daze, Gumshoe shamefully hung his head and opened his mouth in a poor attempt to redeem himself, but was interrupted by another detective with something much more meaningful to say.

"Mr. Edgeworth. We found something," the detective said gravely. His gloved hands concealed the small piece of evidence that was of utmost importance. Edgeworth, deciding that he would deal with Gumshoe later, snobbishly made his way over to the white-coated detective. For some reason, upon finding a possible lead, Edgeworth's usual demeanor was back in place and he paced calmly over to the detective with the spark of hope in his step.

"Show me, Goodman," he prompted politely.

Detective Goodman hesitantly revealed a small, rectangular object to Edgeworth. It was a playing card – the five of diamonds. Edgeworth's eyes immediately widened when his mind registered the object. He snatched the card hysterically out of the woeful detective's open hands, taken aback. He inspected the card with hard, analyzing eyes as his brain rushed with questions and calculations.

"Where did you find this?" Edgeworth asked in a low voice after mumbling something less than dignifying under his breath.

"The bathroom counter, sir – but we thoroughly inspected the bathroom and found no corpse."

Edgeworth nodded, getting paler by the second. He recognized that playing cards were the symbol that the serial killer left at the crime scene, and it could not be a coincidence that they found one here – where Godot had sent them. Questions rushed through his head: What had the killer been doing in this apartment? Why was there no corpse? And most importantly – was Godot even _alive_? Blindly, Edgeworth said the first thing that came to his mind, "The killer must have killed either Godot or the person living in this apartment. Turn the place over and find the corpse," Edgeworth declared logically. He began to make a bee-line towards the bathroom where the playing card was found, but was stopped by Goodman, who blocked his path.

"Sir, it's no use to search the bathroom. There is no corpse. And I do not think that it was the serial killer who left this card because of –"

"Goodman, the serial killer leaves a single playing card at each of his crime scenes," Edgeworth said with a raised eyebrow. "If we cannot find the victim and Godot was indeed here previously, then we can conclude that either Godot was the victim and the killer decided to clean up his mess, or Godot found the body and decided to do something with it."

Goodman shook his head and paled. "I'm afraid that's not why I came to that conclusion, Edgeworth. There's something different about this card compared to the other cards left at the crime scenes," Slowly, Goodman flipped the card over in Edgeworth's hand.

Edgeworth looked at the back of the card and nearly fell to the ground in frustration and surprise. On the card, written sloppily in what appeared to be black marker, was a name. This had not occurred in any of the other murders during the killer's streak – the killer had never written down the names of his victims on the cards he left.

With much dismay, Edgeworth came to many conclusions, but only two of them jutted out in his mind: One was that the name had been written by Godot for some reason as a devilish hint as to where to find him. If this was true, then Godot was just playing with them, which angered Edgeworth. The other possibility was that the serial killer for some reason had written the name on the card to possibly display who his next victim would be. Both scenarios seemed rather unlikely and there were, of course, millions of other logical possibilities. Maybe the playing card was simply a coincidence and the name had been jotted down by an innocent third party upon the spelling of someone's name. Edgeworth was lost.

Looking at the card again, Edgeworth tightly pursed his lips. "Someone is trying to throw us off and someone is playing with us," Edgeworth stated blandly to no one in particular, baffled and insulted that the entire elite police force could be played with by _a single man_. The case seemed to be getting more and more elaborate by the second.

Goodman nodded gravely and paced away in deep thought with a hand up to his scruffy stubble. Edgeworth took the card in his hand and aimlessly made his way back to where he had left Gumshoe. Once again, he stared at the name on the card and could not help but feel nostalgic and even _disturbed _by the name on the card. Edgeworth was certainthat he had heard the name somewhere but could not recall where. It would be unfortunate if he remembered only after finding the victim's mutilated dead body.

"Phoenix Wright," Edgeworth read from the card in a low whisper, his brow furrowed in deep thought. Certainly he would have remembered meeting someone with such an obscure name. Edgeworth tried to abandon the digging feeling of nostalgia, but could not abandon it from the heaping worries of his mind.

* * *

**A/N:** This is a strange sort of Alternate Universe fan fiction because it's not entirely AU, but it definitely does not fit into the canon at all. This is my first stab at a mystery story; I really hope you enjoy it. (Don't worry, I've read my Sherlock Holmes and played my AA.) Oh, and before you guess, Max Galactica is most certainly not the serial killer, haha~

This story was originally intended to be four chapters long. However, since I am long-winded, I might drag it out a big more than that. All reviews are welcome, especially critiques.


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